Across the Great Divide

Appreciating the Opposition.

I learned long ago that your opponents can either make you better or make you worse. The outcome is largely your choice.

Over the last decade, we've seen a coarsening of what passes for public discourse and a lack of respect for our opponents coming from both sides. Pres. Obama's practice of engaging people with whom he may disagree may have helped him get elected, but it still runs counter to the prevailing winds in politics — seen most recently in the current impasse over the Minnesota state budget.

Although the legislators I heard today on MPR were conciliatory and talked about how hard and well both parties worked together in committee, when it came to actual votes and legislative outcomes, their respective political positions seemed as polarized than ever.

More than a year ago, Jeff Dege showed up here, attracted by an American Crosscut post about gun rights, and left his first strongly worded comment. Since then, he's stuck around and done more of the same — 124 times in all by my official count.

I've wondered at times why he has stayed a faithful reader, and whether he has been assigned my case by the vast right-wing conspiracy. Either way, I'd put my shadow up against Dave Thul at The Cucking Stool and Angry Clown at Shot in the Dark any day.

Throughout it all, Jeff has been provocative and challenging, but he's also been civil and careful to back up his point of view. (His citation of the Laffer study on rich and poor states will likely inspire a few posts here.) His comments have also done much to promote discussion, force me to sharpen my thinking and to clarify my positions. We don't often agree, and I don't expect we will ever sing Kumbaya together in New Hampshire.

But like my other readers who usually agree with me, he has made this a better, more interesting blog.

The only question is whether he can take a compliment.

Drinking with the Enemy.

The other day I poked some double fun at the upcoming happy hour "hosted" by MN Publius and MDE.

As someone who founded his blog on the premise of figuring out how people who disagree can still build a decent world, I owe the organizers an explanation of why I look on this opportunity with little excitement.

Yes, I know there are differences between this happy hour and meeting of heads of state, but the question is still pertinent. Why would I or any progressive attend a branded event that seems calculated to create a veneer of bipartisanship for perhaps the most partisan attack blog in the state?

Mitch Berg makes one pass at a reason, reminiscing about a happy hour of yore:

[I]t was just a tiny bit harder to flame on people that I’d met in person.  That I’d actually met as humans, rather than as mere brain-damaged big-government-coddling tax-and-spend liberal drones.  And a few of them wrote as well, saying they could maybe be a little more tolerant of uncaring, selfish conservatives now that they’d actually met some of us — something they didn’t do much of in real life.

It made an impression.

Oh, it only lasted so long, of course. 

And his commenters swoop in to prove the point.

I do agree that such face-to-face contact can encourage civility, but I don't need to bike to St. Paul for a beer to learn its virtues. And I have no interest at all in fake civility that does nothing more than help Michael Brodkorb go back next week and slag more Democrats with more utter B.S.

Real community and real civility — civitas — come about when antagonists find something important they truly want in common. Something they cannot have without respecting the other's perspective, values and rights.

Jonathan Thompson, of High Country News, edits a publication that attempts to bring an environmental audience face-to-face with the complex realities of the American West. They write about inevitable collisions involving die-hard opponents. In the process, they have learned a thing or two about how people who've fought bitterly for years can move on to something better.

The magazine's current issue has a story about how native tribes and farmers along the Klamath River had one fundamental thing in common:

They rely on the river for their food and their livelihoods. While those needs have competed with one another in the past, they are also what kept these guys at the bargaining table until an agreement came together.

It wasn’t easy. Before the farmers and tribes could hold hands, they both had to endure a lot of pain — massive fish kills, dried-up fields and the tedium of the negotiations themselves.

Perhaps that’s the lesson here: Unlikely alliances don’t happen by magic, they take work. Sometimes the situation needs to become so dire that the two sides have no other choice but to get along. Then they can find a bit of common ground, and their reverence for and reliance upon the land will finally win out over age-old animosities. And then they will discover that their alliance was never that unlikely after all.

I'm conflicted about attending. What do you think?

American Crosscut: Disagreeing to Agree?

This time Joel and Charlie tell stories about how people manage to not talk about what they might have in common.

Joel: When we left our heroes, they — we — had explored, if not come to complete agreement, on the two bills we set out to discuss, and while I'd be happy to go into more detail on that, I'm not sure that it would serve much of a didactic purpose for our readers.  They've already gotten, I trust, that two folks with different orientations can discuss stuff that they don't agree on without throwing stones or epithets, although apparently not without a snarky comment from time to time.

I'll ask you to point our readers at your last posting, as that's where I want to start off, with the difficulties that you say that folks like me run into in trying to persuade folks like you, 'folks like you' being defined, for the purposes of this discussion, as people who aren't pro-gun, but are willing to listen, and consider other positions than the one you start off with. 

I dunno, Charlie.  And some of this stuff breaks my heart.  I really don't worry a lot about most folks who always and only react to their stereotypes and/or neurotic fears about gun owners, and won't hear anything to the contrary; there's nothing I can do about them.  (I'm not saying that all folks who disagree with me on these issues fall into that category, but I am saying that some do — and while I'm not going to go into detail, I'm including some people who I love dearly, including members of my family of origin.  Almost got me killed once -- and no, I'm not exaggerating; anti-gun neurotics can be dangerous, and all the moreso if they're merely naive and hysterical, rather than malicious.  But I digress.) 

The rest of it frustrates the hell out of me.  If I want to write or say something that goes kind of long — it takes a while to describe, say, the history of "shall issue" gun laws in the US, as part of the argument that they're not only mainstream, but working just fine — many folks don't read it.  Hell, you'll worry about going long, and fret over whether or not your readers will be willing to follow a discussion that takes thousands, or tens of thousands, of words, and you've agreed to be open-minded in this discussion.

But going long has its problems.

So sometimes I go short, and pull out a picture like, say, this one, to illustrate a point.  Or to help make one.

And therein lies a story.  It may or may not have some relevance to this discussion.  But it's going to be long.  Bear with me; I'll try to tell it entertainingly. 

Nationally, Joss Whedon's fans have put on a charity showing of Serenity <http://csts.mnfirefly.com/sponsors.htm> , in celebration of his birthday, every year for the past few years.  It raises money for Equality Now <http://www.equalitynow.org/> , one of his favorite charities.  You can look at their website and decide for yourself whether or not you're on board with their agenda. Me, I am in part, and not in other part.  Hell, I don't even agree with me all the time . . .

So, there I was, siting at my desk getting some work done, and minding my own business, when Felicia calls me up and asks if I want to go see the charity showing with her; it'll be few bucks, but will go to a charity that I'm probably generally comfortable with, and I do love that movie, for a lot of reasons, and not just the hot babes with guns.  (That I like hot babes with guns isn't a problem for Felicia; we've been married for close to thirty years, and I've long been out of the closet as a heterosexual.)

And then I took a look at the sponsors page.  Regular tickets were something like ten bucks each, but there were several levels of sponsorship packages, culminating in the Big Damn Hero package.  $250; buys you something like four tickets, a t-shirt, and a halfpage program book ad. 

This, to me, sounded like too much fun to miss, and while $250 isn't always easy to come by, I figured I could probably get a few of my gun nut friends to kick in.  Some of them are fans of the movie; others might like to see it.  Yup, there would be some conservative folks who would have problems with Equality Now's pro-abortion-choice position, and what they should do, I said, is decide if, on balance, they're willing to support the event, or not.  No problem, either way.

My friends quickly came up with $250, and kept giving.  So I bought another Big Damn Hero package.  And another.  And another. 

Lots of individuals and groups contributed to the event.  Some bookstores and writers sent books; some stores contributed discount coupons and merchandise to be raffled off.

But there were a grand total of five of these $250 packages bought.  Four of those five were bought by my "gun nut" friends and me.  My suggestion to the local anti-gun group that they match our contributions to the event were ignored.  Figures.

As you can probably imagine, the folks running the benefit — media science-fiction fans, whose main interest, or at least one of them, is Joss Whedon's Firefly — were rather pleased that I kept coming back to buy more of the two hundred and fifty dollar packages.  My fairly modest requests — and you know me, Charlie; these were requests and not demands — that our four half-page ads be consolidated into two one-page ads, and that my bunch of folks get a reserved seating block so that we could all sit together were things they were happy to do.   

Oleg Volk produced the two ads, on a very short deadline, and they were great.  I already showed you the one that ended up gracing the back cover; the other one is here.

So, come the night of the show, my crowd gathers across the street, to have coffee and dinner before the show, and then walk over.

About two dozen of us, and I don't think many of them were unarmed,  walk up to the Riverview theater.  With one exception, nobody was carrying openly — the one exception was me; I had a knife on my belt, but my handgun was, as it usually is, carried discreetly.

Appearances can be deceiving.  The tallest of us, Bruce Krafft, is about 6'6" tall, 300 pounds or so with a long, fiery red beard, and a shaved head.  He looks like a Viking ax murderer, except for the pleasant smile (not having actually met any Viking ax murderers, I'm just guessing that most of them don't smile pleasantly), but is actually a very nice, very bright, very soft-spoken guy.  Seismic Sam looks like the sort you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley — and, truth to tell, if you were to mean him or his family any harm, you wouldn't — but by profession he is a scientist, whose medical inventions have saved thousands of live.  (That is not a figure of speech.)  Greg's a pilot; Felicia is a librarian. 

When we'd received our packages in the mail, we were told that we shouldn't be standing in line — we should just proceed directly into the theater, because we already bought our tickets, after all.  As we did, the very nice woman running the benefit spotted me — she recognized me from my pictures; we'd never met — and shouting, "You must be Joel!" she ran over to give me a hug. 

There was a moment of street theater.  The very pleasant, shaved-headed black guy walking out of the previous movie, said, "oh, hugs.  Cool."  and gave me a quick hug, much to the amusement of all. (I don't know if he hung around to find out what that all was about.)

So we proceeded to our seats to wait for the show.  The program books were handed out as people came in and bought tickets...

And then the unfortunate incident happened.  I'm still irked about it.

Ten people, led by some middle-aged woman, took allowed exception to the self-defense poster that was our back cover ad — the link that I opened this story with — and they stormed out of the theater in a huff. Seems they objected to the gun she was wearing.  In the ad. 

I missed the unfortunate incident; I'd stepped outside the theater for a cigarette, and heard about it as I came back in.  I don't know if that was just as well; I'd have been tempted to say something like, "You're worried about a picture?  Lady, there's a couple dozen people in the theater actually carrying guns" — which would probably have been wrong, and I probably would have resisted the temptation.

I was, to say the least, a little irked.  Just as I was about to dash back into the theater — the movie hadn't started — to take up a collection so that the charity wouldn't suffer a $100 loss, which hardly seemed fair, the woman running the event told  me that there was nothing to worry about; they hadn't refunded the hysterics' money, and the seats had resold, anyway, so the charity was going to, rather than suffer a loss over that, actually make a little more profit.

So, still irked but feeling a little smug, I walked back in and sat back down.

Before the show, the various banner ads that various sponsors had purchased were flashed on the screen, and every time that one of the TwinCitiescarry.com ads showed up, it was met with applause from the entire theater.

And then we watched the movie, and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Honestly, I don't know how many peoples' views on issues around carrying guns in public were affected that night.  Maybe none; maybe several dozen.  But I'll score that night as a win.  A bunch of gun folks, identified as such, contributed their money and their time and their presence to a charitable event, and had a lot of fun doing it.  It's entirely possible that we did nothing, that night, to change anybody's prejudices about the sort of people who routinely carry handguns for personal defense.

Then again, maybe a few minds were changed, and a few hearts were softened.

I guess we'll have to see.

Me, I'm working on another t-shirt.  It's got the twincitiescarry logo -- a snubby revolver over a carry permit on the front -- and the words

ASK ME ABOUT MY SECRET AGENDA

On the back it says:

TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE AMERICAN WAY.  WHAT THE HELL IS YOURS?

Charlie: I think our topic is about how, if we share some values or positions, can we communicate with those who aren’t disposed to our view of the gun issue. The people in your story who walked out of the showing might represent a certain inflexible and intolerant subset of anti-gun people. They might also represent people who were outraged that you had tried to exploit their cause to advance yours, one they didn’t support. We’ll never know how you might’ve been able to reach an understanding since you didn’t talk to each other about it.

I don’t think that hijacking the Equality Now benefit was your intent, but can you see how people might think so? Unfortunately, when we send messages out into the public domain, we don’t get to decide how other people interpret them. Let me give you a different example.

Here’s an image from the same fellow who produced your ads. Now here’s my tale.

My father committed suicide with a firearm 24 years ago this month. He had begun treatment for a serious mental breakdown, but after some false starts, there was reason to hope he could be helped and recover. He was a tremendous human being and a pillar of the community, he had a loving family and the resources to get better. He also had a number of guns, all of which we thought had been located and secured out of the house. He had started medication to stabilize his condition, but the drugs took time to work.

One morning, he got up early and went into the dining room to do his crossword puzzle. Once my mother rose and went to take a shower, he went back to the bedroom, pulled his pistol hidden in their closet, went down into the family room and put a bullet in his brain. The account by my brother, a trained crime investigator, was at once dispassionate and heart-rending. He was staying at the house, heard my father come downstairs, heard the shot and ran in to discover our father’s body. Too late.

Now, ask yourself whether my family might feel that the poster — which was not aimed at persuading me, obviously — was just a bit lacking in sensitivity, not to mention lacking a refined understanding of the circumstances related to suicides. That message may pass muster with the faithful, but makes it a little harder to find common ground with me, don’t you think? And consider there are more Americans who’ve experienced a family member’s suicide than belong to the NRA.

I’m willing to assume the creator would be horrified to know how offensive his image could be and move on from there. But I’ll also insist on pointing to some facts that contradict the poster’s “they’ll just find another way to kill themselves” propaganda.

Most firearms deaths are suicides, and localities with supposedly overly restrictive gun laws have much lower suicide rates. Washington, D.C., has the lowest rate in America, one-fourth the rate of No. 1 Alaska. New York ranks 49th or 50th. California is 42nd, standing out among western states that account for 10 of the top 12 highest suicide rates.

I don’t even need to go into the statistics on accidental deaths and abusers murdering spouses to be able to claim that guns are a major public health issue. I’m not willing to dismiss this aspect of gun ownership from a discussion about the impact of regulations. The proper role of guns in self-defense against criminals is only one part of the issue. I want to look at this systemically, believing we can work out our differences over time, as long as we remain open to all the information and all possible solutions — maybe not getting to perfection or universal satisfaction, but better for all.

In our last post, I connected sex education with gun safety. Let’s extend the metaphor a bit. In both debates, everyone is concerned about prevention — preventing unwanted pregnancy and injury or death. Both debates have advocates for abstinence, and those who say abstinence isn’t realistic and doesn’t work. In my mind, if we insist on abstinence from guns instead of focusing on prevention, we’ll never reach agreement, much less a solution.

Back to your story. The people who walked out focused on the gun and missed a potentially provocative discussion about how a shared commitment to equality could be expressed differently. Over the past month you and I — and our respective readers — have done pretty well engaging in respectful discourse. I’ve personally done more listening than talking, in part because I want to better understand your point of view and because gun control is really not a burning issue for me; I’m more interested in how it stands for more fundamental differences about the limits of individual sovereignty in a free country. 

I hope we have opened eyes on both sides, and maybe the minds will follow.

American Crosscut: Can You Take Another Round?

We continue our back and forth on gun bills, and agree on a new curriculum for America's youth...

Joel: Well, having resolved -- at least as best we can -- the issues around HF 498, the "Stand Your Ground" bill, we're on to HF 3324, the gun registration bill, authored at the behest of Heather Martens, the President of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation funded pseudo-grassroots group, hereabouts, that calls itself a whole bunch of things, among them, "Citizens for a Safer Minnesota."  (Heather was shopping this around the Capitol for a couple of months before she made the sale.) 

I'm going to try to avoid ad hominem attacks here, honest.  But, sheesh -- any gun owner who doesn't look with suspicion on a bill coming out of an antigun group is probably not smart enough to be owning a gun.  Or a fork, for that matter.

So let's start off by looking at it.  On the face of it, it doesn't say it's a gun registration bill. What it talks about are transfers of handguns and scary looking long guns. (Okay, I'm being a little unfair; it actually talks about "modifying provisions related to the transfer of pistols or semiautomatic military-style assault weapons.")

In Minnesota, there are three ways you can buy a handgun from a dealer.

1. Get a purchase permit. These are issued by police chiefs, are free, and require a yearly trip to the local PD to fill out the paperwork.  The PD performs a background check, and, in due course, mails you out your purchase permit.  You then walk into the gun store, choose a firearm, produce your purchase permit and state issued ID, pay for it and -- not so fast, Mister; you still have to fill out the federal government purchase form, be subjected to an instant background check, after which you, assuming you are not denied, walk out with your newly purchased firearm.
2. Get a carry permit. Issued by sheriffs, not free, require training, and a background check.  Roughly the same thing, after that.  Including, of course, the federally-mandated instant background check.
3. A "report of transfer."  Instead of going through either of the two processes above, you walk into the gun store, fill in a form, pay for the gun... and then go home.  The dealers send the paperwork to the local PD or sheriff, they do the background check, and if they don't come up with a reason that you're disqualified from purchasing a firearm in five business days, you head back to the store, go through the same federally-mandated instant background check, and walk out with a gun.

In none of these three cases does your purchase go into some state or federal database to be maintained indefinitely.  It's not gun registration; it's just a background check to see if you are legally able to buy a gun.

There's another way to buy a gun... in Minnesota.  (And most other states, too, but let's keep this Minnesota-specific for the moment.)  You find a guy who is not a dealer who has a gun that he's willing to part with.  You meet with him.  You show him your carry permit or purchase permit – if he doesn't know that you have one, he's putting himself in the way of all sorts of trouble if you end up doing anything illegal with that gun – you hand over some amount of money, he hands over the gun, usually (not always, but a good idea) gives you a bill of sale, and you go your separate ways.

Notice that in all of these cases you've gone through at least one background check – and in the first three, two of them.  And, again, in none of these cases are you creating a permanent, state-maintained database of who owns what.  The law just tries to prevent law-abiding people from selling guns to criminals, leaving that part of the market to other criminals.  I'm not sure what value duplicative background checks have, and I'm pretty sure that the proponents of this bill don't, either, or they would have mentioned them.

And then we get to the bill, which turns that background check system into a permanent gun registration system.  Or would, if we hadn't killed it for the session.  (Like Jason in those horror movies, these things never stay dead; you've got to kill them again and again and again.)

Which brings me to, finally, gun registration.  Let's start with what gun registration doesn't do – after decades upon decades of gun registration in various parts of the United States, even the Centers for Disease Control's review of all of the research has shown that not any gun registration scheme has demonstrated that it will do anything to lower violent crime.  Or increase the likelihood of punishing violent crime.  That works really well on Law and Order and other dramatic fiction; the real world is not obliged to live by the scriptwriters' scripts.

Probably the best-documented case of the slippery slope of gun registration leading all the way to the bottom of confiscation is that of the United Kingdom. This whole thing is worth reading, but note the short form: step by registration/limitations step England went from an effective right to keep and bear arms to almost total confiscation in less than a hundred years.

It's not unknown in the US, either. There's been lots of talk about the DC gun ban – but note that the base on which the handgun ban rested was the law requiring registration, followed by the laws prohibiting anybody from registering a handgun. Even during oral arguments, the district's lawyers had to admit that the prohibition against registration was, in fact, the mechanism for the prohibition against possession.

It's not just DC.  Chicago has done the same thing – handguns must be registered in order to be lawfully possessed; no more handguns will be registered; the result is handgun confiscation/prohibition... for law-abiding citizens. (Chicago's large number of gang bangers don't seem to find themselves terribly inhibited, but I digress.)  New York City did the same thing with the Sullivan act, although it's not slid all the way down the slippery slope.  Now, in order to so much as possess a handgun in your home, you have to apply for a "premises permit" allowing you to have a registered handgun in your home – if, of course, after hundreds of dollars in application fees, certainly months and perhaps years in waiting for a decision, and quite possibly additional thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in lawyer's fees, your permit is granted.

The sort of thing has led to moments of unusual interest, over the years. New York State passed a "assault weapons" registration bill many years ago, with promises that, of course, it would never turn into confiscation.  Years passed, it did, and those folks who had registered their scary-looking rifles were instructed to turn them in or face prosecution. California has done much of the same thing for some firearms; more are due to follow.

(In one case, the letter went to a fellow who had moved up to a more civilized state – Colorado, I believe. Not being at all interested in what confiscation rules New York state had passed that didn't affect him, he scrawled something like, "if you want my guns, molan labe," on the letter and sent it back to the New York authorities.

(He got a letter from his brother in a few months later.  "Did you hear about that SWAT raid on the house you used to own...?")

Yes, gun registration leads – not always, so far, but often – to confiscation.  And it's understandable. For the gun grabbers, registration is a necessary (albeit not sufficient) start. 

The people who push gun registration are not all gun grabber types, trying to incrementally reduce the right to keep and bear all arms, nibble by nibble.  Some of them are those who believe – as an article of faith, and who am I to mock somebody's religion? – that gun control laws actually can reduce violent crime – despite the lack of evidence – and, once the latest gun control law has not actually reduced violent crime, think that if only they pass another one, or two, or a hundred, that will do the job. (Sort of like ancient physicians figuring that if a small course of leeches didn't cure the disease, what was needed was more leeches.)

Charlie: Or more tax cuts, if I may interject from the left field bleachers.

Joel: So, here we have a situation where there are already background checks – in most cases, multiple, duplicative ones – no evidence that requiring additional background checks for private sales would do anything useful here, anymore than it has elsewhere, and the creation of a permanent database of every transaction involving any transfer other than a very short term loan of a handgun . . .

. . . all mislabeled as "closing the gun show loophole." 

If the folks behind this bill are looking to bridge any sort of divide at all, much less a great one (and I know you're not one of them) perhaps they might do well to start treating those of us watching them with entirely justifiable suspicion as though we didn't just fall off the turnip truck.   

Charlie: I'll confess, I didn't start out predisposed to this bill, based simply on my belief it would not prevent crimes and likely not solve them, either. But I was willing to consider it on the basis of consistency — that is, we do this for other gun transactions; why treat these any differently?

You make the case that such harmless, incremental steps can lead to greater perils later on. Most of the time when I've heard that, it sounds to me like Black Helicopter paranoia, and I'm not sure how much of that interpretation was due to my prejudices or the advocate's rhetoric. But we're trying to get beyond that here.

The slippery slope argument is really spelled out in the long "essay" you linked to, which details the changes in UK gun ownership controls over the past century. The intertwined history of increased restrictions and fears of immigrants, anarchists and labor agitators does seem to have a few lessons for us today. Personally, I find that example more persuasive than the usual Nazis-disarming-the-Jews images I showed here last month.
I also see how a broad rationale for justifying restrictions — in the present case, guns as a public health menace — can lead to further restrictions without new laws being enacted. As I've said before, even gun-hating liberals should be able to get that point, having witnessed enough of that behavior coming from the White House.

But seriously, 26,000 words and 293 footnotes? That won't get far in the court of "gun grabber" public opinion, now, will it?

Turnip truck full of facts and historical precedents aside, here's what I think you and your friends face in trying to persuade people like me.

• Many people living in cities — and close proximity with lots of people they don't know — are not crazy about the idea of more folks walking the streets with firearms, legally or otherwise. That may make you feel safer, but they don't see it that way. They can look to other countries with more restrictive gun laws and lower murder rates and think, yeah, like that.
• Some of your homies do not... um... take rejection well. I think I can speak for others when I say the combination of belligerent rhetoric and gun ownership does not set minds at ease with the idea of loosening restrictions. I know there are lots of reasonable gun advocates out there, but we seem mainly to see the foam-flecked.
• Glorifying or celebrating guns — as with sex, drugs or rock & roll — will turn off some people concerned with the state of our culture who have no personal experience with guns. Unfair? In some cases, sure. But mocking or belittling their fears with the gun equivalent of Gay Pride Parades won't convert any more of them to your side.
• This issue is too wrapped up in party politics. Frankly, a lot of "my" people will have a hard time looking past the candidates and causes associated with gun rights to see the merits of your arguments. I think the gun rights argument could be more compelling if it focused more on the rights and less on the minutia. And as part of that, better segment the people on the other side you are trying to persuade. Focusing on firing up your base just fires up the other side. How do you find more people predisposed to civil rights who are opposed or on the fence? What would it take to bring them along?

You haven't asked my advice, but here it is. Get the NRA, the National Safety Council and Planned Parenthood to champion a new national school curriculum that requires X hours of age-appropriate sex education and gun safety over several years. Make it part of phy ed or health and include actual time at a gun range and training in non-violent conflict resolution. Freak out liberals and conservatives together, while giving each something they want.

I think the country and our culture would be better off with that deal. 

Joel: You're preaching to the (secular) choir, Reverend, on that latter; as the saying goes, "you had me at 'hello.'" I'll address the other stuff next round – you went long; I'll need to – but if there's anybody more in favor of teaching non-violent conflict resolution, gun safety and sex ed (and, for that matter, drownproofing) in the public schools than I am, I can't imagine who it might be. 

Can I kick the next round off?  You've gone from the underlying subject matter we've been talking about to the issue of how to persuade people, and I think that's a very useful direction, but it's a new one, and I'd like to start out.

American Crosscut: Boy Scouts and Bogus Boyz.

Joel Rosenberg and I resume our discussion of the Minnesota bill HF498 [Download pdf] on the use of deadly force in self-defense.

Since we last posted, we've had some other exchanges that were useful to us, but a bit off track for posting here. You'll notice Joel is posting comments here, too. That's a good byproduct... no, the point of these discussions we're having. Opening up to the other side on one thing leads to another.
 
Charlie: Joel, I don't think we're too far apart on the right to self-defense or when there are questionable claims, they ought to be determined in the courts. Certainly, people will make mistakes in those split-second decisions, and those are a very different sort than the "mistake" of a driver who gets into a car after downing a quart of booze. I'm not personally big on punishing mistakes. I think we ought to try to prevent them as much as reasonably possible, and try to mitigate the seriousness of the consequences that do occur. It seems like this part of the discussion may belong with the other bill, so I'll table it for now.

The question for me regarding HF498 at the end of our previous post was the purpose of the presumption language. Let me remind readers where we left off last time. I wanted to understand how the presumption of innocence — which we all enjoy — relates to the bill's statement about immunity from prosecution:

(a) An individual who uses deadly force according to this section is justified in using such force and is immune from any criminal prosecution for that act.

   If we agree the place to sort these claims out is in the courts, how can that be done if the individual claiming self-defense is immune from prosecution? This language may only be intended to let someone shoot into ground in self-defense and not get hauled off to jail by the cops, but it sure sounds like he can kill someone under the defined circumstances and not even be brought to trial, where the claim could be tested if there were questions about its legitimacy.

If this language is still confusing to me after numerous readings, no wonder people who haven't even looked at it are concerned. Can you address this and straighten me out?

Joel: Utterly fair questions.  Let me give you two answers.

I'll take the easy one first.  We don't have to guess how this language will be implemented, because we know how this language is implemented.  There are quite a few other states that already have just this law -- tweaked slightly, from state to state, to make the language consistent with pre-existing state law.  While there are some Minnesota specific bits in HF498, all of the reform in the following states was based on the same model bill, lobbied for by a fairly prominent — in the view of some folks, including me, often too accommodationist — civil rights organization, the NRA.

Here's the list.

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
South Dakota

I'm not including states like Utah — while Utah has very similar language (I have to know this; I'm certified by Utah as a Concealed Weapons Instructor, and teach this stuff), it wasn't part of this endeavor by the NRA; its self-defense language was already in place long before the NRA move for reform in all the other states.

Charlie, do you think that if such laws had the effects that you're worrying about, you wouldn't have heard about the murders in, say, Colorado that had gone unpunished because of them?  If it hasn't been a disaster in Colorado, why would it be one in Minnesota?

That's the easy part.  The more difficult one involves a close look at the text and at legal construction.

Here's what it doesn't say:  (emphasis mine, in both of the following quotes)

(a) An individual who claims to have used deadly force according to this section is justified in using such force and is immune from any criminal prosecution for that act.

Nope.  It starts off with "an individual who uses deadly force..." 

Whether or not the individual has, in fact, used deadly force as provided for in that section is, as lawyers say, a matter of fact.  In a court of law, matters of fact are determined by a trier of fact — either a jury, or a judge sitting as a trier of fact.  While, of course, the trier of fact should give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant, juries (and judges, in a bench trial) aren't required to throw common sense out the window, much less run down the stairs to get it with a shovel and make sure it's dead.  They're allowed to — invited to — look at the evidence presented to them, by both the prosecution and the defense, and make some judgments about what the facts are.

When I do my carry classes, I talk about this stuff.  One of my standard raps goes something like "if you're surrounded by a dozen Bogus Boys (they're a local gang, consisting of gang bangers who have not been able to maintain the minimal interpersonal skills required by the Bloods, Crips, or Vice Lords) trying to knock you down and stomp you to death, a jury might conclude that you were in imminent danger of immediate death or great bodily harm, even if they displayed no weapons.  If you're surrounded by a pack of Cub Scouts, threatening to punch you in the thigh with their little fists, you're really very unlikely to be able to persuade a jury that you were."

Getting back to my first answer, we ran into these same sorts of objections to carry reform.  We heard all the theoretical worries about how the Personal Protection Act would turn bar arguments into gunbattles, fender benders into gunbattles, disagreements about parking spaces into gunbattles... and when we pointed out, then, that something like three dozen states already had similar laws in place — in some cases for many decades — it hadn't happened there, we were right... but the folks opposing carry reform just refused to listen and to look for themselves at the other states, but kept repeating the same theoretical fears, over and over again.

So, in answer to your question: in other states, with laws similar to HF498, people who have claimed self-defense have, in fact, been brought to trial.  I don't see any reason to believe that it will be different here — and, in fact, every reason to believe that prosecutors will bring people claiming self-defense to trial, if and when they have sufficient grounds to believe that the claim is bogus, and that they'll be able to persuade the juries of that, when they have sufficient evidence that the claim is bogus.

That any help?

As a heads up, when we get to the gun registration bill, I'm going to be pointing out how gun registration has been — not everywhere, nor all the time — a necessary precondition to gun confiscation, and how almost invariably useless it's been for the purported purpose of preventing violent crime and aiding in the apprehension and punishment of criminals.

Over to you.

Charlie: Well, I've always made a living by my imagination, so maybe it's too highly developed. I've also had a youthful experience of entering a dwelling by stealth — at least in the view of my girl friend's father, who had a shotgun and no sense of humor. It's easy for me to imagine not being around to have this discussion, had Colorado passed its law about 20 years earlier.

But I take your point. Here I am.

I also noted that the Halloween story recounted in an article I linked to last time was from 1992. So yes, there are cases used to evoke fears, but they're not exactly ripped from the headlines.

Here's a case from Colorado that's more current. It involves a homeowner wounding a late-night intruder in his home, who was drunk and disoriented from a motorcycle accident. He thought he was entering his father's house down the street. After considering charges against both parties, no one was prosecuted, and no apparent outcry followed.

Another involves a man assaulted in his house shooting one of the assailants in the back while the guy is sitting in his own car. The jury, interpreting the evidence and the law, found him not guilty of murder. That one was more controversial, but despite the ambiguity (Colorado also has a detailed self-defense statute), the Colorado legislature hasn't gone back to clarify the 1985 Homeowners Protection Act.

You've allayed most of my concern about the intent of HF498 and how it's likely to be interpreted. I'm still not convinced it's needed, but I don't believe it will unleash gunplay in the streets, either. I hope I don't come across too wishy washy here, but I'm not anti-gun or anti-self-defense. I do not represent gun control forces; I represent me trying to come to terms with this issue and trying to provide a model for how others might, as well.

Now, speaking of active imaginations, tell me about how gun confiscation and registering private gun sales come together in your mind. The usefulness of regulating sales requires a whole 'nother post, at least.

American Crosscut, Round 4: At Last, the Bill.

When I started this conversation, I didn't expect it to be a single-shot. Now it looks like we'll need a big magazine.

Joel and I switched red and blue last time, and I've kept those colors here.

Joel: When we last left off, Charlie, we'd agreed to move on to the specifics of the two bills, HF498 [Download pdf] and HF3324.  I'd like to take the first one first; all in all, I think it's the one that's much more likely to be in front of the lege this session — it may be amended onto another bill on the floor — and, if not, well, we'll be back to it next session.

I'm also going to try to keep my opening of this round short, and as focused on the bill itself as I can.  A bit of preparatory stuff, for those who have never looked at these before:  language that isn't either stricken through or underlined is in the law now; stricken through stuff would be removed, and underlined stuff added, if the bill becomes law.

609.065 JUSTIFIABLE TAKING OF LIFE USE OF DEADLY FORCE IN SELF DEFENSE.

Which is where I'm going to start off:  at the beginning, and what I'm going to focus on in this installment.  At present, Minnesota law is clear — both statute and case law — on when you can lawfully kill somebody, not when you can lawfully do something that may kill somebody, or legitimately and lawfully threaten somebody.  (I hope you will agree that there are times when it is legitimate to threaten somebody — not out of anger, but out of a reasonable fear that one is about to be harmed.)

That's a problem, and I'm going to draw on some experience as a guy who teaches civilians, cops and lawyers about this stuff in saying that.  Nobody — nobody sane — really wants to kill another person, even if under a deadly, violent attack.  But reasonable people do want to know what they can do — both short of that and, should it become necessary, including that — so that an encounter that they didn't want doesn't end up with their blood on somebody else's hands.

Let me tell you a short story; I'll file off some names and play around with dates and muck with some of the facts, but it was at least as bad as I'm telling you that it was; you've my word I'm not whitewashing this.

Al and Betty were having a few folks over one evening, when they heard a commotion outside their house.  When they went to the window, they saw four guys kicking the crap out of a fifth guy.  "Hey," Al yelled, "get away from him!" and they fled; Betty was on the phone to 911, and Al went out and administered first aid until the ambulance and the police arrived.  The kickee was hauled off in the ambulance; the police took a report and left.

A little while, there was another commotion outside.  The four perps plus another had returned, and they were not happy that Al had interfered with their kicking.  Another call to 911.  Average response time to a Priority One in Minneapolis is in the double-digit minutes.  They started moving up the sidewalk, announcing their intention to come in and do harm to Al and his family and friends, in no unambiguous terms.

At that point, Al made a decision that was to cost him. Granted, it almost certainly saved him to come to his wife come and his friends from some serious harm — but it was to cost him.  He stepped out on his porch, a shotgun in his hand, and told the thugs — remember, these were four men who had just beat another man unconscious, and then had been kicking the unconscious body; they'd brought along a friend — to go away.

They started to move toward him — he fired one shot into the ground, not near them, but signaling his intent — and they scattered.  Fast.

The police arrived.  Giving no consideration to the fact that they'd know where to find him if they needed to arrest him, giving no consideration to the fact that he had just called the police, twice — once to report the beatings; the second time (technically, yes, it was his wife) to call them for help — they cuffed-and-stuffed him, and hauled him off to jail.

He was charged with two felonies.

That is among the outrages that this law is needed, if not to prevent (it won't remove the "ham sandwich" prosecutor powers, but it might inhibit them a little), to make less common.

We can go into the provisions of HF 498 that would have been applied here, but I think — and hope — that you'll agree that he would not have been better off waiting until the threat was even more imminent, and he would have been allowed, under present law, as we've seen above, to take one or more of their lives.

Over to you.

Charlie: First, let me say I have no problem with Al's conduct. In fact, he behaved the way I'd want my neighbors to behave. You don't say what happened after he was charged, but based on your account, it sounds like he was dealt with unjustly. The story raises several questions for me.

One, was Al constrained by current law from doing the right thing? It doesn't appear so.

Two, will others, knowing what happened to Al, be constrained from behaving in a similar, responsible manner? Some will argue yes, though I bet most gun owners in his position, including those doing the arguing, would still act as Al did.

Three, should we try to prevent what happened to Al, if we can do it without unintended consequences that are worse?  Again, I say, yes.

And that brings me to four: How? I'm not convinced the bill under consideration would actually accomplish something we both agree would be a good thing. I've thought about this and have some alternative proposals, but if you want to convince me about this legislation first, keep going.

Joel: Well, after some time in jail, several thousands of dollars to a very good criminal defense attorney, the case was settled. He didn't go to prison. 

Was he constrained by law? Well, he clearly wasn't constrained from doing the right thing — he did it, after all — but he could have been, quite easily, put in front of a jury, and that's always a roll of the dice. He clearly was treated unjustly — it's the old MPD "arrest the gun" problem.  The cops — and for all I know they were good, service-oriented cops — weren't allowed to cut him loose, write up a report — and they weren't required to consider his self-defense explanation (as HF 498 would have required) before arresting him, even though they would have known, had they looked into it. that he wasn't some sort of transient who was likely to disappear, but a working man and homeowner who, had he been indicted, would have been easy to find.

It's still possible, I guess, that he could have been indicted; it's also possible that the cops wouldn't have done more than pretended to consider the circumstances surrounding it, and that it was pretty clearly self-defense... it's just more likely that he would have spent that night in his own bed — sleeplessly, fearfully, granted, but his own bed nonetheless — and never have been indicted in the first place.

Your second question — and it's a good one — is what would other folks do, knowing that.  I don't know; there is no way to tell.  But I think it's fair to guess that at least some, knowing about that, would say, "Hey, Betty — a guy's been kicked to death in the street, and if I go out and shout at them to stop, they are going to know that it's us who called the police, and we might end up, if we're lucky, like that guy Joel told me about in class. If we're lucky."

I'm really glad we've gotten to your third question, because I think it's exactly the right one. And exactly the right way to look at any changes in law. It's important, as you say, to consider both the benefits and costs.

In this case, we don't have to hypothesize. Language very similar to HF 498 exists in the laws of around 20 states; HF 498 is the Minnesota flavor of a bill that the NRA has been pushing for, nationwide.  (There are additional states that have very similar language — Utah, for example — but they don't have the same origin.)

So, I'll ask you, in all of those states — some of those having had similar language for many years, some for only a few years — what have the costs been?  Show me — I'm willing to consider that these laws have resulted in people being unreasonably killed when they otherwise wouldn't have been, or murderers have gotten off when they otherwise would have gone to prison. 

But give me examples — as many as you can.  Not, please, some prosecutor saying that if some gang banger shoots another gang banger he'll claim that he was scared and get off on a self-defense claim; for that sort of thing, show me where some gang banger murdering another gang banger got off on a self-defense claim because he claimed he was scared.  Don't restrict yourself to that; you don't have to.  Show me where, in the more than two dozen states that have similar language in their self-defense laws, authorizing scaring an attacker or not retreating has resulted in bad things happening that likely otherwise wouldn't.

Beyond that...

I'm going to be fair here.  If I was having this discussion with one of our local antis, who have been characterizing this as the "Shoot First!"  or the "Shoot the Avon Lady" bill, I'd be asking for the numbers of dead Avon ladies.  But I'm having it with you, and I'll refer to you how the bill would handle "arrest the gun":

(b) A law enforcement agency may arrest a person using force under circumstances described in this section only after considering any claims or circumstances supporting self-defense.

The emphasis is mine.

Your turn.

Charlie: I am not going to be drawn into representing all the anti-gun arguments in the world or separating actual from imagined consequences. I won’t supply you with a bunch of counter examples, because I am willing to grant you that the changes you seek may result in very few dead Avon Ladies, Mormon Missionaries or Trick or Treaters.

Ooops, here’s a dead kid in a Halloween costume, but it’s only one kid, he was a Japanese exchange student, and Rodney shot him in 1992 before these newer laws were in place.

Again, the way Al was treated was extreme, especially since no one was harmed. I have no problem with the cops saying, in cases like Al's, “don’t leave town for a few weeks while we look into this.” But I also think being dead is a pretty severe penalty, whether it's for someone’s mistaken reading of kids looking for a party, or for being on the wrong side of a drug deal. So I think it's reasonable to expect in those cases that even a normally law-abiding citizen could be inconvenienced a bit before the facts are sorted out.

I confess, I've read the text of the bill a number of times, and I've read a lot of pro-commentary on it, but it wasn't until re-reading the beginning of your post that some of the fog lifted. You said (my emphasis):

At present, Minnesota law is clear — both statute and case law — on when you can lawfully kill somebody, not when you can lawfully do something that may kill somebody, or legitimately and lawfully threaten somebody.   

If I understand you correctly, your intent is to cut some slack for Al — the guy who scared off some thugs. But not to let Rodney — the guy who killed a kid in a white tuxedo who didn't understand the idiom "Freeze" — off the hook.

You may hope HF498 would change that murky bathwater, but the bill still looks to me like it could excuse shooting screaming babies. (At least if someone had just finished reading Ray Bradbury.) It first presumes an individual who perceives a threat is justified in using force and then it appears to give a stay out of jail free card in (a) preceding the (b) you mentioned above.

(a) An individual who uses deadly force according to this section is justified in using such force and is immune from any criminal prosecution for that act.

Maybe you can walk me through how (a) and (b) relate, and how the new law would treat Al, Rodney and some of the other permutations likely under claims of self-defense.

What Obama Said to Me.

The week Barack Obama made The Speech About Race, I've been working on another conversation America needs to have. Nominally, it is about guns and the right to self-defense, but the larger topic is Obama's.

How do Americans with differences form a more perfect union?

My discussion with Joel Rosenberg is ongoing. For some, my side of it has been too general and naive, as Obama has been accused of being. Some others might mistake Joel's desire for clarity and doggedness about change as bellicosity, but committed struggle, too, was something Obama endorsed.

As two verbal and opinionated bloggers, we could easily have fallen to skewering each other in comment threads and planting unanswerable tarbombs in our posts.  That can happen when you don't do hard time in conversation and jump right into the fight. When you fill in the other's words for them. When you stick with your tribe and brand Them as embodying all your fears.

Instead, we've tried to have a conversation and actually listen to each other. Sometimes, it's gotten rocky or we've wandered off the tracks we'd each hoped to follow. At times, I've risked coming across as weak by simply letting Joel say his piece instead of standing up to every utterance with which I might have some difference.

Obama talked about that, too.

We may not move the other very far from where we started, but that's not the main point. It's to show how such a respectful conversation can take place, and then another, and then another, until we find that common thread that will lead to a better solution than the one we have.

I'm not a lawyer or a politician, so the modes of debate and fierce advocacy don't speak to me. As a career creative problem-solver, I've dedicated myself to discovering new ideas and reinvigorating old ones. I don't think good creative solutions come from fighting — or from compromise. But a new idea almost always brings together opposites in a new way.

If you were my client, I wouldn't show you all this work in process, because I'd want to dazzle you with my solution later. But here, I'm willing to show how messy and difficult this business can be, so that you won't be discouraged when your own efforts at reaching across the divide don't produce anything right away.

I don't know exactly how this will conclude, but I am full of hope.

American Crosscut, Round 3: Still Haven't Shot Each Other.

In the last round, I managed to yank Joel's chain and he let me know about it. Please notice how we're working through this. For those readers who are accustomed to seeing vilification in comment threads when you venture into alien territory, I also recommend visiting the version of this on Joel's blog, where I've been treated with some tough love.

And I think Joel is the first person on the planet to recognize my fundamental innocence!

Joel: Well, I think you want this to be the last round, and I can live with that, but I think there's some business from the last round, and an overview of what we've been doing that I really need to deal with. 

In general:  I'm finding your unwillingness to dig into the details both frustrating and counterproductive.  We agreed to talk about two legislative proposals here, and what we've spent much of our time discussing, alas, are feelings to the detriment of exploring what these proposals are all about and what they might mean to the lives of the people they'd affect, should they become law. 

Now, were I feeling combative and thought you were being willfully deceptive — I don't, as to the second, although I'm starting to develop a bit of steam; hang on, as the ride's about to be just a little bumpy — I'd argue that your last posting was intentionally misleading and dishonest, because you've got an assumption buried in it that is loaded, offensive and misleading, and as long as we're discussing feelings, I'm feeling pretty damn irritated.  Irked, even.

But, no, I don't think it was willfully dishonest; I just think it's all the more offensive for its -- and your -- innocence. 

Charlie: [For the record, I asked Joel if I could insert my responses into his original submission this round rather that post a long reply, and he agreed.] Joel, we can have more rounds. My blog is about a lot more things than this topic, and one important one is how people learn to  talk to each other and hear each other. As long as we're making progress, I'm willing to continue where this takes us.

But your email illustrates part of the struggle I'm having. It is already 1,100 words, and once a regular post of mine gets to 2,000, I feel like I've gone on too long. So how do I respond to this scroll?

Joel: However you want to.  I don't say that to be easy, or difficult, honest; I just see posts differently than you do.  I don't have a feeling that I need to make them either long or short, or a belief that I do.  I figure that those folks who are interested in what I have to say will want to read at any length I'm willing to write at, and those who aren't, well, they aren't going to become interested if I keep it short. 

Let's look at it. In detail. You be red; I'll be blue.

I don't share your same suspicion of government powers, but after eight years of the Unitary Executive, I agree it's more important than ever to watch the erosion of freedoms and to keep the risks before the public.

Now, let me get this straight.  You're suspicious of the Executive branch of the Federal government, the most closely monitored, overseen and checked branch of government in the whole United States, but you're not suspicious of local governments, which are far more likely to direct affect the lives of the people they're supposed to be serving.

But . . . we've had exactly one American citizen, captured on US soil by the Feds, hauled off to Guantanamo. And he eventually got a high-priced lawyer, and is facing trial.  But we have all sorts of abuses by more local governmental officials — cops, zoning authorities, city and county prosecutors, and let's not get to the Ministry of Love — that happen every day, are almost utterly unchecked, not overseen and barely monitored, and you don't worry about those? 

I just don't get it.  You worry about George W. Bush, whose ability to affect your life directly is minimal — but not the unchecked power of the cop down the street, the city and county attorneys, the zoning officials, and . . . well, you get the idea.

On the second part of your question, I have a brother working on a brutal double murder case that's 33 years old. They just might crack it, and one of the main reasons he can work on a cold case that happened when he was still in high school is those records have been preserved, so I don't think that's a bad thing.

Here's where I'm getting really irked.  In context, you're suggesting that maintaining records indefinitely of lawful transactions between citizens is the same thing as preserving evidence of a crime.  If you're trying to bridge even some small divide, could you start by accepting — implicitly and explicitly — that citizens, simply by engaging in lawful transactions that you don't care to engage in yourself, don't become suspects and that records of those transactions aren't, in and of themselves, evidence?  Don't you understand how offensive that is?

Charlie: To be clear, I'm talking about a broader concern over government powers beyond being hauled off to prison at night. A lot of people here and around the world have definitely had their lives impacted by the supposedly closely monitored and checked Mr. Bush — looked at the economic news lately? — but I know that's not our topic here, so I'll move on.

I do trust local government more, and here's why: Because I do think their power is checked when citizens become involved locally. I know people in local government and have close relatives who work in four different law enforcement agencies. I've worked on community issues with local government. I can write editorials that will get published; research and influence local issues; attend hearings; volunteer for task forces; help people I respect get elected. Also important, I can talk with my neighbors and organize them, just as you've done.

I am not going to have much influence on the war in Iraq or the bailout of Wall Street or national surveillance policies. And if I only stay home and blog, I'll have the same amount of trust and influence with local government.

As for the comment that irked you, I didn't mean to equate maintaining records of lawful transactions with criminal evidence. In fact, the investigation I referred to is using public records, even to who was in certain classes in school many years ago. And I believe when they find the perpetrator, it will be someone who had no prior criminal record. So I agree that the records you refer to aren't "evidence" any more than who flunked gym class in 1968. But if having reasonable access to them helps solve a crime, I'm not very worried.

Joel: You said: On the first part, if society says firearms sales should be regulated, I don't know why the rules should be different for a transaction between me and my neighbor, as opposed to me and a dealer. If he sold me his car — or even gave it to me — we'd have to go downtown and transfer the title, same as if I bought from a dealer.

Sure. But the right to keep and drive cars isn't a fundamental human right, and there is no history of car registration leading to confiscation. You only have to transfer the "title" and go through all that red tape -- which, by the way, you can accomplish in five minutes by him signing the title over to you and you dropping a stamped envelope in the mail -- because you've agreed to all that red tape in return for being allowed to have your car on public roads.  Keep it on your own property, and you don't have to do any of that.

How would you feel about the government keeping permanent records of every book you (and all the rest of us) have ever checked out of a library, bought in a bookstore, or loaned to a friend for a few hours?   After all, in some cases preserving that "evidence" might help your brother solve a brutal crime.  Some religious groups — Thugs, some Muslim sects, Christian Identity, for example — have a history of criminal behavior, and others may go all jihadi.  Let's be sure that entry and exit into their establishments are monitored, and the evidence preserved. Safely, of course, available only to law enforcement.

Ditto for monitoring — and permanently recording, protected, of course, by appropriate data practices act safeguards, like all the rest — all of everybody's emails, web browsing history, etc.  I can guarantee you that letting the government have full access to the latter will solve crimes — after all, there's apparently plenty of people who look at unlawful porn, and get away with it. 

And maybe, just in the interest of preserving evidence, we should be not only fingerprinting children at birth, but taking DNA samples — some of those will, certainly, become evidence in a criminal investigation.

Charlie: The Founding Fathers couldn't very well make owning a car a fundamental right any more than the Magna Carta would've enshrined a right to firearms. My point was about consistency. Why register some transactions and not others? And it's fair for you to say why register any?

All kinds of ownership has some red tape, and a big part of the registration process for cars, houses, marriages and births, loan documentation, hazardous materials permits, etc. is about protecting the owners as well as other interested parties. Ownership of a gun does have other potentially interested parties. — your neighbors, but also criminals and people who are concerned about maintaining political power.

I and a lot of other left-leaners would agree with you that monitoring issue is potentially very dangerous political territory. The question is how we make common cause around the freedom aspect without getting hung up about legal gun ownership. Maybe we're just paranoid about different aspects of the same thing.

Joel: You said:  A private gun sale wouldn't be that simple under the bill proposed this year, and I agree that was a convoluted process unlikely to stop criminals from getting guns.

Then what was the actual purpose, if the stated one falls apart under even very light examination?  Wasn't it to take the Brady Bunch/HCI/CSM program of getting rid of private citizens rights to have guns, one step at a time, one step farther?   

But one reason it has to be complicated is because the gun lobby insisted that background check records not be preserved, so the process has to be repeated. I don't have the answer, and I understand why proposals like that annoy law-abiding gun owners.

Well, as to your last phrase:  good.  But no, it doesn't have to be complicated; it doesn't have to be, at all. 

And, until you really get that, I'm not sure that we're going to be bridging this here divide. 

But, anytime you're ready, I'm up for another try. 

Charlie: Then let's get to the details you've been wanting to talk about all along.

American Crosscut: Guns, Round 2.

This is the second installment of a conversation with Joel Rosenberg, blogger, novelist and second amendment advocate. Let's review the purpose of American Crosscut for those who haven't read these before.

You can read more here about why I started this experiment. In brief, I don't believe one side has all the answers and the other guys are morons. We have to learn from each other, and that starts with listening to the other side.

We want to help create an America where greater understanding and respect help people cross divides, so they can discover and advance common goals. We hope to inspire constructive left/right relationships by exploring, through blog-based conversations, the similarities as well as differences between people who normally disagree.

Joel is passionate about responsible gun ownership and civil rights. Though I've been called a "gun grabber," I'm passionate about the latter and in favor of the former, so I thought that could be the basis for a conversation. We have one more in the works.

Charlie: Last time we got together, Joel, you asked people to read the Rep. Cornish "Castle Defense" bill instead of being "manipulated by unscrupulous politicians who are appealing to ignorant feelings." I'm all for that. I have read it a number of times, as I've read Mitch Berg, you and a host of commenters on the topic of self-defense.

I'm not persuaded the bill — which didn't make it out of committee — was good legislation. If readers want a line-by-line rundown of a dead bill, they can tell us in the comments. But the principles are worth discussing here.

I don't mean to insult you when I say there are ignorant feelings on both sides. I do have a problem sorting through a rationale in some of those comments that seems to say "I'm a reasonable person who'll blow away anyone who threatens to take my property and if you think I should be liable for prosecution, you're a moron. Just trust me, because I'm a real American."

Some people might reasonably be alarmed by that, even if the contempt between the lines is just rhetorical tough talk. It makes it hard to hear an argument based on civil rights.

Joel: Sure.  But, in the interest of keeping it short, as per your request, that's just a straw man argument although, the world being a big place, perhaps at some point, somebody, some time has made it.  I'm willing to knock down the straw man, if you'd like, but perhaps we can spend our time more constructively, on the substantial arguments for and against HF 498? 

Ignorance on both sides?  Sure.  I think a lot of the folks supporting HF498 haven't themselves examined the legal intricacies of  the language, much less gone on to talk to experienced defense attorneys and prosecutors about the problems that it fixes.  Same for most of those, I suspect, opposing it.  Here's one short presentation [NOTE: mp3 audio bad; will fix if possible]  which includes a fairly mild outrage -- the case was dropped, after all, at a cost of some time in jail, weeks of fear, and $5000 (a bargain; I won't pry into client matters, but I'd bet huge amounts of money that David put in a lot more than twenty hours, and $250/hour for possibly the best self-defense attorney in the state is a fire sale price in the first place) -- which happened because, absent the reform of HF 498, the police were not required to (and didn't) consider the claim of self-defense before cuffing-and-stuffing the guy and writing up their report.

I don't know how folks can make informed decisions about it without, well, looking at those. That said, what I think a lot of reasonable people do is develop their own network of trusted advisors on many issues; people who have demonstrated a taste for and competence at looking into the details. 

If you and I are trying to take on that role for those folks who, for whatever reason, might think that we have some credibility, I think we really do have to get into details.

But if what you want to talk about are feelings, either mainly or to the exclusion of facts, I'm up for that, too.  I'm interested in a lot of stuff, including feelings.

Charlie: One of the tenets here is that we don't have to represent "our side" of a debate and try to beat the other guy. The goal is to develop a more nuanced appreciation and empathy for the other's position.

I'm not against people defending themselves and their homes. I'm not personally worried about you strapping on a .38 whenever you leave the house. I'll even grant you that having more permitted carriers might foil a few bad guys, and homeless guys in dumpsters will still be safe under a more lenient deadly force self-defense standard. Positioning you and other supporters as reckless and trigger-happy is indeed unfair.

But will a higher proportion of armed potential victims really deter serious crime? It doesn't seem to work that way in North Minneapolis. Are unwarranted prosecutions of innocent homeowners really a problem?

We can discuss all that, but I'm most interested in the principles and systems at work here.

At a higher level, I honestly do think this Castle Defense initiative is about stoking fears to obtain broader political advantage that does not really have the average working person's interests at heart. If those forces prevail, you may get your gun law, but will the economy be better? Will the schools where you can afford to send your kids improve? Will your life improve? 

I'm interested in the reasons people feel so threatened and on their own that they need that law. That's when the "substantial arguments for and against HF498" start to mean something to me.

Joel: Well, I'm perfectly willing to get involved in empathy; I'm not sure it's useful, but I'm willing to play.  Still, I'd rather deal with facts:

But will a higher proportion of armed potential victims really deter serious crime? It doesn't seem to work that way in North Minneapolis.  Are unwarranted prosecutions of innocent homeowners really a problem?

In order:  probably -- almost certainly -- to some extent.  Depends on how high "higher" is. We can delve into depth into Lott's studies, if you'd like, but the short form is that it seems that the issuance of carry permits is followed by both a small but significant drop in violent crime, accompanied by a small but significant rise in property crime, and a small but significant rise in violent crime in adjacent counties of states that don't have "shall issue" carry laws -- always, of course, controlling for other factors.  The amount of that effect appears to be related to the number of permits issued (although my own theory -- I can't prove it -- is that it's related to publicity about the numbers of permits issued, and were the word to get out how very many permit holders there are in my own Bancroft neighborhood to get out, our low violent crime rate would drop even further).  Other more significant factors can more than more than wipe out  that effect, which is why you have to control for them -- if you're suggesting, as I think you are, that significant improvement in schools and the economy (and we can talk, some other time, about what "improvement" is) would do more to lower the crime rate than an increase in carry permits, I think you're absolutely right.  I also think that SSM for gay men (I'm in favor of it for lesbians, too; another issue for another day) and more adoption of local children by them (lesbians tend to "roll their own", not that there's anything wrong with that) would do more than carry permits; the best anti-crime program is, pretty obviously, a good two-parent family.  My guess is that, say, Jerry Lee Knox and Gregory Knox had had two average long-term-relationship gay dads in a stable relationship rather than being raised by that mother of theirs, they wouldn't be in prison now.

But I digress.

If I was representing a "side," I'd argue -- truthfully and accurately -- that north Minneapolis seems to be very low on carry permit adoption, and that the benefits are going to be largely elsewhere.  But I think that the huge crime rate there is largely driven by the incredibly counterproductive War on Some Drugs and an economy that increasingly has fewer decent jobs for folks with limited education, and where, say, having the local dealership in crack will have a lot of appeal to folks whose other choices appear to be pretty minimal, and consequences not only to him and his competitors who will, in many cases, choose ballistic competitive measures. 

I don't know how to fix either of those problems, but am sure that a fix, if there is one, will be very expensive.  The benefits of the MCPPA are paid for by the permit holders, and received by both us and others.  Put another five thousand permits in north Minneapolis and, yes, I think that violent crime would show a significant real decrease there.  It'd kinda suck for the folks in Robbinsdale, but you can't have everything.

As to your last, yup.  The rule of thumb is that if you take out your gun, you'd better be able to come up with ten grand for a lawyer, as a starter, and if you pull the trigger, the price goes up, and the risks of being prosecuted are huge -- you could ask Scott Treptow, if you'd like.  Unwarranted prosecutions do happen -- a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, and all -- and fending them off or defending against them is part of what criminal lawyers I know do.  (That's why David was such a bargain in the case he talks about -- the guy actually pulled the trigger in self-defense, to scare away the people who were obviously threatening his life, and the lives of his family, and he "only" had to pay five grand for terrific representation to make it go away.)

Why do law-abiding folks feel threatened?  Because they have good reason to believe folks like me who tell them that "if you take out your gun, you'd better be able to come up with ten grand for a lawyer, as a starter, and if you pull the trigger, the price goes up, and the risks of being prosecuted are huge."  And, somehow, I don't think they feel less threatened when the opposition to a mainstream reform law -- and HF 498 is just that -- portrays them as trigger-happy vigilantes looking to shoot some kid for taking a shortcut across their lawn.  Some folks find that offensive. 

Why do people need protection against the government, in general?  Because the power that governments wield can always be used badly.  Not "always will"; always can. 

That is, to loop back to where I came in, why civil rights are so important.  It's why it's great that the ACLU works to keep the government out of our bedrooms and from snooping through our book purchase records, for example -- not because the government will always use its intrusive abilities and huge power evilly, but because it can, and sometimes will.

I'd like to broaden the discussion to the other topic you put on the table. 

I was talking with a cop friend earlier today about the gun registration bill while we were each doing our own thing at the gun show.  He got a little sarcastic.  "Well, of course, all those registration records will be kept secret and never abused by anybody, and can't possibly be a step toward confiscation like it's been in New York and California and Chicago and DC." 

He couldn't quite get that out with a straight face, but he did give it a try.

I think it's my turn to ask a question.  If you'll grant that criminals simply won't buy guns themselves through FFL (Federal Firearms License) dealers, but will continue to buy guns unlawfully, as they do now, what benefit would there be to requiring private sales to not only go through FFL dealers, but have the records preserved by the government forever? 

Charlie: I don’t share your same suspicion of government powers, but after eight years of the Unitary Executive, I agree it’s more important than ever to watch the erosion of freedoms and to keep the risks before the public. On the second part of your question, I have a brother working on a brutal double murder case that’s 33 years old. They just might crack it, and one of the main reasons he can work on a cold case that happened when he was still in high school is those records have been preserved, so I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

On the first part, if society says firearms sales should be regulated, I don’t know why the rules should be different for a transaction between me and my neighbor, as opposed to me and a dealer. If he sold me his car — or even gave it to me — we’d have to go downtown and transfer the title, same as if I bought from a dealer.

A private gun sale wouldn’t be that simple under the bill proposed this year, and I agree that was a convoluted process unlikely to stop criminals from getting guns.
But one reason it has to be complicated is because the gun lobby insisted that background check records not be preserved, so the process has to be repeated. I don’t have the answer, and I understand why proposals like that annoy law-abiding gun owners.

American Crosscut: Ask Questions First, Shoot Later.

My regular American Crosscut counterpart, Joey Monson, has been very busy making Wisconsin safe for secondhand smoke, so I invited Joel Rosenberg to  join me for this edition.

A common thread runs through Joel's blogging, novels and training work — guns and civil rights. To some, he's a knowledgeable and heroic advocate for individual freedom. To others, he's a fanatic who just may be compensating for something.

Which is kind of how public debate about guns tends to break down.

From reading him, though, I knew he'd welcome a discussion that didn't involve hysterics over guns, so I gave it shot...

Charlie: Two gun bills are before the legislature this session. One dealing with self-defense has gun opponents in an uproar. The other requiring background checks for gun sales in the secondary market has gun owners up in arms. We can get into the specific legislation if you'd like, but I'm more interested in the reactions underlying these proposals.

I understand why people unfamiliar with firearms are worried about guns being misused, and why their desire to suppress guns in society drives responsible gun owners nuts. Both sides seem to think the facts are on their side and their fears about the other side are justified.

Suppose you were doing a course entirely for the folks who think the Castle Doctrine/Shoot First bill is a bad idea. How would you open their eyes to your point of view?

Joel: The second step would be a little history, and I'd ask folks to combine history with common sense.

But, before that, I'd ask folks to step back, and take a look at the facts.  I'd say something like, look, whenever you're trying to figure out what legislation will do, should it become law, the first three things to to look at are the legislation, the legislation, and the legislation.  I'm told you think it's a bad idea, I'd say. 

Okay -- and I'm not asking this to embarrass you:  how many of you folks have read HF 498?  Hey, it's okay -- I haven't read all of the thousands of bills up in front of the lege, either.  But we're talking about this one, and Charlie Quimby has been nice enough to put this class together of people who say that they think that the bill's a bad idea. That's great, by the way; I've long had a standing offer to Heather Martens of the "Citizens for a 'Safer' Minnesota" to let me do a presentation on other laws to her followers, and over the five years that offer's been in effect, it's been ignored.

So, let's get started. 

If you haven't read the bill, I think that you're here at this class under false pretenses -- you've been fooling yourself.

You don't think that this bill is a bad idea, because you haven't given yourself the necessary tools to think about this bill.  If you don't know what it says, you haven't begun to equip yourself to have an informed opinion about what it will do. What you have are feelings about it, and you've set yourself up to be manipulated by unscrupulous politicians who are appealing to ignorant feelings, not appeal to your informed opinion.

So, yes, let's start off with the specifics of the bill, and then go on to the history of it -- what problems it addresses here in Minnesota, and what the history is of similar law elsewhere.  And by the time we're done, if you still think that calling it "Shoot First!" or the "Shoot the Avon Lady" bill, you'll have to explain to yourself why similar laws haven't left any dead Avon ladies lying on the ground or given legal permission for gangbangers to shoot up the neighborhood

If what you're reacting to are feelings that you've gotten from what opponents or proponents of the bill have said to you, I'd suggest you ask yourself this -- after you've read the bill, and carefully:  "Who's been telling me the truth about this?"

So, let's get started. If we're going to understand it -- whether you end up agreeing with it or not -- let's, well, understand it.

That's how I'd start off.  And then I'd turn to the bill, and go through it, line by line. Let's get informed first, and then we can deal with feelings based on information.

Charlie: Maybe we can take the rest of the class in a follow-up session. For now, I think we likely agree that emotion, coupled with personal experiences, accounts for where most people line up on either side.

I grew up in the small town west where guns are a pretty normal part of life. We took gun safety in gym class. When my grandfather died, my dad inherited two possessions — a quarter horse and a lever action Remington 30.06. Those were venerated valuables worth passing on. I liked to shoot, but not to kill, so hunting wasn't a big part of my experience, but until I gave my rifle to my son a year ago last Christmas, I've always had a gun around.

I suspect people who've never had that normalization of guns associate them mainly with violence, power trips and aberrant thinking. And if I may go out on a limb early, people with those types of issues are probably disproportionately attracted to guns. They just don't represent the vast majority of gun owners.

On the other side, there's a strong current of aggressive defensiveness — of the "pry my gun from my cold, dead fingers" variety — that spooks gun opponents. What in your experience makes you such a staunch defender of gun rights, and why should these people not be afraid of you? 

Joel: Well, okay, if you want to get into facts -- or, at least, the facts about the bill -- later on, I'm willing to do that.

I'm not sure that it's just emotion and personal experiences that do drive folks; I'm pretty sure that it shouldn't, all by itself.  I think too many tend to generalize from too few experiences, and too few facts.

But, yeah, too many people are rationalizers, rather than rational.

One of the many things I respect about Felicia -- we've been married for thirty years, come this year -- is that it was facts and reasoning that brought her -- she did her own research; being an information professional, she's very qualified to do that; nobody else does her thinking for her, and smart people don't try to -- over a period of years, from being emotionally anti-gun to, among other things, being the first woman in line at the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office in 2003 to apply for her permit.  (She wasn't the first person in line; there were some guys who got there ahead of her.)  If you want to know what combination brought her there, ask her; she's been an adult for some years now, and is perfectly capable of speaking for herself. 

And, sure, lack of familiarity often breeds fear.  There's a fair number (I'm not going to claim a majority; haven't taken a survey) of white folks, particularly suburban liberals, who seem to be utterly terrified of black folks -- particularly black folks who live in the city.  Of those I've talked to about it and have been willing to talk about it -- I think that many bigots have trouble copping to bigotry; most simply change the subject, at least around me -- not one has ever so much as sat down and had a cup coffee with a black guy who lives in the city.  Kind of reminds me of that awful Bill O'Reilly thing where he (granted, not a liberal) went to some restaurant in, I think, Harlem, and was utterly surprised to learn that when black people eat in a restaurant in a black community, they use utensils and engage in conversation.

Sometimes I wonder what planet some people come from. 

Me, I grew up in what was, in many ways, a stereotypical liberal Jewish household, at least on the gun issue.  Guns were a horrible, goyish thing, and, of course, it would be utterly horrible if any Jew were ever to have anything to do with one . . . unless, of course, they had an Israeli accent and were wearing an IDF uniform, in which case it was a good thing.

That said, the importance of civil rights was part of my upbringing. Civil rights aren't just what allow a black guy with the appropriate amount of money in his pocket to sit down at a lunch counter and buy a cup of coffee, or for all of us to go into the voting booth and support the candidates of our choice (or try to vote one out of office); it's also what protects those of us with unpopular views or -- in some asshole's view -- the wrong progenitors from being hauled off in the middle of the night to disappear into Lubyanka or the Isle of Pines or Buchenwald or a swamp on Olen Burrage's Old Jolly Farm, never to be seen alive again.

Yeah, I feel pretty strongly about that.

We can get back to that, if you'd like, and how central the issue of the right to keep and bear arms is to other civil rights -- enumerated and otherwise -- if you'd like, in another round, but this is already getting long, and I haven't dealt with your question as to why people shouldn't be afraid of me, nor asked you one.

So let's get to that.

I dunno. I'm not sure that people shouldn't be afraid of me. It's okay if some are. After all, I'm a professional writer who has some tools I've honed a bit in the practice of my craft over some decades, and I think -- and hope -- a sometimes biting wit, and am, when I feel it appropriate, utterly willing to engage in criticism that is intended to be cutting and painful, and if, say, a fellow I'm not going to name on your blog still holds a grudge over how I metaphorically and very publicly raked him over the coals over the time he tried -- and failed, miserably, and embarrassingly -- to get me jumped-and-thumped by the MPD and he still wants to keep his distance, hey, that's fine with me.  Hell, the more distance, the better; I'll be happy to buy him a bus ticket to Tierra del Fuego. One-way, and he's got to promise to use it, and at least stay there for awhile.

But I guess you really mean about the gun stuff.  I don't get to decide what other people feel, but, hey, let's take a look at the facts.  I've been regularly carrying a handgun in public -- lawfully -- since years before the Personal Protection Act passed, and have yet to take it out to kill, wound, threaten or intimidate somebody for, well, irking me.  And, truth to tell, it's at least arguable that I irk pretty easy.  (The Star Tribune used to worry aloud about "irked" permit holders.  That irked me.)

You could ask my friends.  And some folks who don't like me.  Need a list?

Rationally, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, isn't it?  Since I've managed to go through something like a dozen years of carrying without killing, wounding, threatening or intimidating somebody with my handgun* --

after having been, at various times, insulted in person, in print and in email; cut off in traffic; bumped into on the street; sworn at by a stumbling drunk coming out of bar; gotten bad service at any of several establishments; had my parking space stolen and my car towed;  and a zillion other irk-worthy things I could list, if you'd like

-- the smart money is that I'm not going to do it today. 

But, hey, even if after all that, if some folks choose to be afraid of me shooting them, I'm not equipped to deal with it, even if they'd like me to; I'm a writer, not a psychotherapist.  Ask any shrink you'd care to, though; if people don't want to change, there's nothing they can do about it, either.

So far, this has been more of a Q&A than an exchange; I think it's time that I ask you a question before I take another one -- so let me ask you this: if, after all that, somebody is frightened of me shooting them, what measure or measures do you think should I take to reassure them, why should I take those measures, and how effective do you think they'll be?

___________
* Except in my very few defensive gun uses.  Let's not get into those, here; it'll get 'way too long.  I've never had to put my finger on a trigger, and have never come close to being prosecuted in those very few cases. Granted, a robber or two got scared out of hurting me or my family, and that's just fine with me -- that was, after all, the whole idea. Can we leave that part of it at that, or do we need to go into detail?
___________ 

Charlie: On a personal level I’d expect you to avoid threatening language and behavior and try to engage them in ways so they get to know you as a human being. You already do a lot of education, and I knew you’d be open to this, so that’s why I contacted you in the first place.

But I think we both know the issue here is not the measures you take individually — because you can’t reassure everyone, and you’re not the only conceal and carry gun owner out there. We have to deal with this as a society, too.

You don’t have to do any more than the law compels you to do, and I believe the law should be concerned with safety, not reassurance. So we have this push and pull over laws restricting or relaxing rights where these concerns about safety and liberty play out.

Since I have the ball, I’m calling time out here. This is the first conversation I’ve had with a footnote! Let’s pick up the thread in a new post a few days from now.